A man identified only as “our friend” attends a lively conversation about what the post-Revolutionary world will look like and returns home wishing, “If I could but see it!” (7). As he arrives home, the weather changes, and his unease about the debate gives way to a feeling of well-being. A night of fitful sleep leads him to “surprising adventures” that will, he believes, be best told in the first person.

The now-first-person narrator exits his home in the Hammersmith district of London and discovers a different world than that of the night before. The weather is unusually sunny and warm, and the River Thames is stunningly clear, free of industrial pollution. He gets in a boat with a man dressed in clothing more appropriate for a medieval waterman than a 19th-century one. The narrator looks around him in wonder, noticing the cleanliness of the riverbanks and the beauty of the buildings. A bridge unlike anything he has ever seen catches his eye. The waterman says that it was built in 2003, alerting the narrator to the fact that he has entered the future. When the narrator gets out of the boat, he politely tries to pay the man for his services, but the man seems confused.